There are 49,000 children and young people living in the UK with a life-limiting or life-threatening condition. That’s one child in every 270 or the equivalent of one child in every school across the UK. Together for Short Lives is here to help make sure that every one of these children and young people and their families gets the best possible care and support.

Over the last year we have been working to help shape a world where every UK child and family gets:

The right information from the moment of diagnosis so families can make choices about the care they receive

Easy access to services so that families can spend more time together

The best quality of care

Reliable and sustainable support now and throughout the family’s journey

Our report charts our achievements across each of these four strategic priorities and the difference they made. Each priority explores the challenges faced by children, young people and families, shows the work we have been doing to help, and looks at change in motion.

We have shared family and professionals’ stories that demonstrate our work, and illustrated our report with lots of quotes, feedback, numbers and infographics that bring our work to life.

One family who shared their story were the Harrisons, who talked about the amazing impact that taking part in Text Santa had on them. Mum, Amanda says:

“The film captured our family beautifully. The children had a wonderful time and were completely spoilt. Many happy memories were made that will stay with us forever. We have been approached by people, some we had never met before, to say they were donating for the first time after seeing our story.”

A massive £1 million was raised for children’s hospice services with our ITV Text Santa campaign, helping so many families like Amanda’s to make lasting memories.

Other stand-out moments from the last year include:

Children’s hospice awareness has more than doubled. At the start of the year 9% of the public said they knew hospices were charities and rely on donations, by the end of the year it had changed to 25%.

Our lobbying of Ministers and NHS England secured the continuation of a critical £11 million grant for children’s hospice services.

We now have 544 families in our family community – that means hundreds of families who don’t feel alone anymore.

As well as highlighting our achievements this year, our report sets out our direction for travel for 2015/2016, the first year of our new three year strategy Quality of life, Quality of death. Through leading and working in partnership with others, we will make change happen to improve the lives of children and families.